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Book Arts

In their broadest sense, the book arts are at the core of our inventory. To be sure, the category encompasses the specialties that you see on our homepage, such as Fine Printing, Fine Binding, and Illustrated Books. However, it also includes such things as writing books and calligraphy, fore-edge paintings, books on papermaking, and leaf books.

N.p. Kerberos Press, 2011. Octavo. 28ff. One of twenty copies. Signed by both artists on colophon. Presented as an unbound collection of twelve detail illustrations of twelve different species of solitary bees, each with an accompanying description of its physical and social characteristics, its habitats, and its recorded locations around... More

Offenbach am Main: Gebr. Klingspor, 1930. Oblong 32mo. 24pp., frenchfold. Illustrated with elegant silhouettes of men and women dressed in the height of fashion, each framed by a colorful border. Facing each silhouette or pair of silhouettes is a passage of German verse. This particular copy is specially bound as... More

Oakland, CA: Peter Rutledge Koch, 1988. Broadside measuring 19 by 26 inches. One of 100 copies printed on Arches cover paper and signed by the author and the artist. This is an interesting piece in that it combines both art and science. The text includes the poem by Michael Rothenberg... More

(France: Mid-13th century). Single leaf measuring 203mm. by 140mm., written in a minute gothic hand in black ink with glosses in red. Text includes the last forty-three verses of Luke and all of the first chapter of John, plus chapter 2, verses 1 through 19. A small miniature at the... More

Los Angeles: Kenneth Karmiole, Bookseller, 1981. Quarto. 28pp. One of 164 copies. Scriptores Astronomici Veteres is a collection of Greek and Roman astrological texts, of which the most important is Maternus's Mathesis, the most extenstive astrological book from antiquity. Here, the original leaf is from Liber Octavus, printed by Aldus... More

NY: Society of Foliophiles, (1925). Quarto. One of 200 copies printed for the Society of Foliophiles, containing 20 original leaves from notable books of English literature from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Unbound, as issued, with each leaf in its respective, annotated folder measuring 12 1/2 by 9 1/2... More

San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1938. Quarto. 53pp. One of 297 copies printed for the Book Club of California by Edwin and Robert Grabhorn. Tipped-in is a leaf from the Polycronicon, with a rubricated initial on the recto and verso. It contains a passage on the campaigns of Cyrus the Great... More

San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1938. Quarto. (2)ff.,15pp. One of 260 copies. The original leaf is from folio ccxiii of the Pynson 1509 edition. The essay by James D. Hart is decorated on each page with charming color-printed facsimiles of woodcut fools. Leaf lightly stained, else fine. Bound in linen-backed printed... More

San Francisco: (Grabhorn Press), 1939. 12mo. (9)pp. One of 55 copies. Tipped in after the title page, the leaf features a large woodcut of John Heywood at his desk. On the window behind him, several spiders observe a fly trapped in a web. On the verso of the page are... More

San Francisco: Peregrine Press for the Porpoise Bookshop, 1962. Quarto. 20pp. One of 76 copies printed and illustrated by Henry Evans at the Peregrine Press for the Porpoise Bookshop. With illustrations throughout in pale terracotta. This leaf book explores the contents of a journal recording the business transactions of a.... More

Akron & Evanston: Bruce Ferrini /Hamill & Barker, 1993. Folio. 40pp. One of 166 copies. With an original leaf from the fourth edition of the Latin Bible, printed by Gutenberg's successors. The leaf contains text from Deuteronomy 9:17 through 12:6, a significant passage in which Moses returns from Mount Sinai... More

Los Angeles: Plantin Press for Bernard Rosenthal and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge, 1971. Folio. 13pp. One of 193 copies printed for Bernard Rosenthal and Zeitlin & Ver Brugge at the Plantin Press, with an original leaf printed on vellum by Peter Schoeffer at Mainz in 1472. It is one of... More

Austin: W. Thomas Taylor, 1995. Quarto. lxxxiv, 242pp., leaf tipped in at rear. One of 100 copies of the special first edition distributed for the Friends of the Brigham Young University Library by W. Thomas Taylor. Specially bound in quarter goatskin, with an original leaf from the 1524 Colines edition... More

San Francisco: Grabhorn Press for David Magee, 1958. Octavo. 30pp. One of 200 copies printed for David Magee at the Grabhorn Press. This original leaf from a Book of Hours was likely written and illuminated in Paris during the first portion of the fifteenth century. It bears four initials accented... More

Los Angeles: Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop, 1950. Tall quarto. 62pp. One of 300 copies printed by the Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop. The leaf is from the portion of the Chronicle on the sixth age of the world. It bears two woodcuts on the recto and six... More

Boston: Nimrod Press, 1966. Folio. 7pp. One of 125 copies. A discussion of Jenson’s life and influence, with a leaf showing his beautiful Roman type from the 1472 edition of Pliny’s Natural History, printed in Venice. Even more than 500 years after Jenson first developed his Roman type, it is... More

Placerville, CA: Blackwood Press, 1985. Quarto. (10)pp. One of 73 copies. This leaf originates from Jenson's printing of Macrobius' "Saturnalia", a philosophical treatise in the style of a symposium, much in the manner of Plato's "Symposium" and Aulus Gellius's "Noctes Atticae". The "Saturnalia" is particulary significant because of its citations... More

(Fullerton, CA): Stone & Lorson, 1985. Folio. 23pp. From an edition of 115 copies, this is one of 89 copies quarter-bound in vellum, together with an original bifolium leaf from the edition of 1619. This copy contains a full hand-colored map of Palatinatus Bavariae in southwestern Germany, complete with text... More

Oxford: Plough Press, 1986. Folio. (6)pp., followed by ten annotated folders containing type and paper specimens. One of 110 copies. This collection of leaves was compiled to demonstrate some of the most important characteristics of nearly two hundred years of printing in England and Scotland. Leaves include The Optick Glasse... More

Los Angeles: Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop, 1956. Folio. 31pp. One of 290 copies printed at the Plantin Press for Dawson's Book Shop. Though this title usually only includes one original leaf, this particular copy contains two, one from the Book of Proverbs and another from the Book of... More

(Cambridge, MA): Houghton Library, 1994. Square octavo. (26)pp. One of 500 copies. Warmly inscribed by Lorenz to Anne & David Bromer. A catalogue for an exhibition of artist's books by Angela Lorenz held at Harvard University's Houghton Library in September 1994, featuring full-page photographs of the books and detailed descriptions... More

(1860). Handscroll, measuring 10 3/4 by 331 inches (273x8407mm). An elegant makimono-e painting in sumi ink and color wash on paper by 83-year-old artist Toshin. Handscrolls are meant to be viewed right to left in sections, traveling arms-length by arms-length through the continuous landscape. This painting takes the viewer through... More

(England): 1849. Octavo. 5ff. Verse manuscript with original watercolor illustrations, including a full-page cover title and title-page and sixteen vignettes throughout. The text tells the tale of Timothy Brown, who is introduced as "a wild little lad" who constantly tears his clothes and searches for ways to spend his days... More

(Paris: c. 1240). Manuscript leaf, on vellum, with text in Latin. The leaf contains 50 lines of double-column text in fine Gothic script. On the recto, it includes a five-line initial in blue and red inks with flourishes radiating along the center margin, while another red and blue initial with... More